Flash Gordon

Of all the comics that could indulge in one of my beloved Holiday Specials, Flash Gordon seems like a pretty unlikely candidate. I mean, now that I think of it, if comics can give us that story where Superboy gets caught up in the Christmas Spirit and decides to get the Legion of Super-Heroes to hunt down the star that the Magi followed to the manger and ends up rescuing a race of alien bird-people from a flood in what can only very charitably be called a miracle, I guess you can wring a little holiday cheer out of just about anything. Still, the adventures of three humans trapped in an alien empire full of tree monsters and beast-men doesn't quite seem like it would easily lend itself to the spirit of the season.

And yet, that's exactly what the folks at Dynamite have done with the new Flash Gordon Holiday Special one-shot, and while I could not possibly be more in the target audience for this thing -- my interest in space adventure is only outstripped by my love of Christmas -- it's well worth picking up.

Annuals get a bad rap. I'm pretty sure it's because they formed the core of some truly terrible crossovers starting in the '90s -- lookin' at you here, Bloodlines -- but there's nothing congenitally wrong with them. In their purest form, annuals are just extra comics, and since we all like comics, that ought to be something to get excited about. And in the case of Dynamite's Flash Gordon Annual 2014, we've got something worth getting excited about.

Flash Gordon is already one of my favorite books on the stands, and this week's Annual continues that trend by providing a fantastic roster of great stories -- including a solo tale for Dale Arden that needs to be made into an ongoing series yesterday.

I consider myself to be a pretty big Flash Gordon fan, but when you get right down to it, I only really like one very specific version of that character: The one from the amazing 1980 movie where he takes down Ming the Merciless while rocking out to Queen. I love that movie to pieces, but it's a very specific kind of love that doesn't necessarily transfer to other version of the franchise. Every time Flash, Dale and Dr. Zarkov make their perennial return to the comics page, it always leaves me pretty cold, and even though I'm the biggest possible fan of Jeff Parker, Doc Shaner, and Jordie Bellaire, there was a part of me that expected that the new series from Dynamite would end up doing the same thing.

And then I read the issue where Ming orders Flash to fight to the death in a gladiatorial battle against an army of beast-men, and Flash straight up gets in front of a space camera to cut a Stone Cold Steve Austin promo about how he's going to tear their horns off and choke them out with their own tails, and I realized things were going to be just fine.

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Lorenzo Semple Jr. arguably did more to popularize Batman than anyone else in the character's 75-year history. The man who created the beloved 1960s Batman TV show died Friday of natural causes at his home in Los Angeles, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Ever since Dynamite Entertainment picked up the rights to Flash Gordon from King Features in 2010, the publisher's been rolling out bigger and bigger plans for the Earthling's adventures on the planet Mongo. Following his tenure on the Kings Watch crossover between Flash (ah-ahhhhh), The Phantom and Mandrake the Magician, Jeff Parker is returning to the King of the Impossible for Flash Gordon #1 with artist Evan "Doc" Shaner (Adventures of Superman, Deadpool) and colorist Jordie Bellaire (Pretty Deadly).

Today, Dynamite announced that they were bringing The Phantom, Mandrake the Magician and Flash Gordon back to comic books with the team of Jeff Parker and Marc Laming. The big return is set to take place in an all-new series called King's Watch, in which the Ghost Who Walks, the Savior of the Universe and... uh... Mandrake find themselves battling against forces that threaten the entire world.

Much like Tintin, Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter stories have always been one of my pop cultural blind spots. I've got a lot of friends that swear by them, and I've always been vaguely aware that there were characters named "Dejah Thoris" and "Tars Tarkas," but beyond that, I'm a pretty blank slate. As a re

If you've been keeping up with Superman lately, then you've seen writer Chris Roberson make a few references to the idea that Superman himself is a comic book reader. To be fair, I don't think we've ever seen Clark Kent duck out of the Daily Planet on Wednesday to get the new books, but the idea of Superman as a fan of sequential art isn't a new one. In fact, it goes all the way back

An inter-planetary swashbuckler and a telepathic magician are headed to Dynamite Entertainment and that, for many fans, is how it should be. As part of a deal with King Features, Dynamite's bringing Flash Gordon and Mandrake the Magician into its broader line of adventure comics, uniting franchises that haven't shared a common publisher in decades

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